That ditto high is impossible to duplicate

The idea for this column started with a parenthetical question for younger readers that I asked online last week:

The letters "cc" appear frequently on e-mail screens and in written correspondence. But do you know what "cc" stands for? If so, have you ever made an actual cc?

Most knew that "cc" still stands for "carbon copy," despite some efforts to modernize the meaning to "courtesy copy." And that it takes its name from carbon paper--a tissuelike film with a waxy ink on one side that you put between sheets of writing paper to create instant duplicates as you wrote or typed.

Carbon paper--it does actually contain a form of carbon on the inky side--is nearly impossible to find in stores and is seldom used for correspondence. In part this is because computers and printers have replaced typewriters, and in part it's because photocopying is easier than fussing with extra paper and products

Yet "cc" seems likely to live forever in the cultural catalog of outmoded expressions, along with "your phone is ringing" and "don't touch that dial!"

A synonym for copy that has died, however, is "ditto," a word--and a smell--that snaps many of us right back to our youth.

Well before legions of conservative radio listeners appropriated the word to express their hearty agreement with Rush Limbaugh's notions, a ditto was a school or church handout, nearly always in purple ink, sometimes moist and fragrant from the machine just down the hall.

I tracked down Keen for more information when the online conversation about old-fashioned copying techniques veered into a celebration of dittos.

Keen's family business, Repeat-o-Type Manufacturing Corp., has sold supplies for what's formally called spirit duplication since the 1950s.

The process involves creating a master copy on a "spirit carbon" and transferring that to a hand-rotated printing cylinder. Ditto Inc., a long-gone Chicago company, was such a dominant manufacturer of the machines that the company name became generic.

Keen said his company, wholly owned since 2004 by Ink Technology Corp., sells only "a couple of thousand" gallons a year of ditto fluid to supply the last machines still churning out copies in isolated backwaters.

In the early 1970s, he said, his company sold at least 100,000 gallons a year as just one of many companies offering it. Now, he said, they're the only U.S. outlet.

One reason dittos began to decline was a concern that the vapors were unhealthy. Though highly volatile methyl alcohol--also called methanol--isn't a carcinogen, studies showed that school personnel who hung out at the spirit duplicator suffered particularly high incidences of headaches, dizziness, nausea, blurred vision and other ominous symptoms.

In other words, the "high" that we got from inhaling deeply from pop quizzes was actually more like a temporary illness.

Another reason dittos disappeared, Keen said, was that photocopier companies successfully sold school administrators on the idea that the versatility and ease of use of their devices made it worth junking ditto machines and their high-volume cousins, the mimeograph machines.

Yes, the ditto and the mimeo' made way cheaper copies--as low as a quarter of a penny each--and were much less prone to breakdown than the early photocopiers. "But Xerox just took over," said Keen.

"No one's been making spirit machines now for 15 years," he said. "You can sometimes find used ones for sale online. They have so few moving parts, they tend to last forever."

Do we miss carbon paper, ditto technology and the often fuzzy copies they produced? We don't.

Things change.

On the other hand, sniffing dittos made me sick 30 years ago, and thanks to Rush, hearing "dittos!" makes me sick today.